


Sundering Myself

by pan_ismyhomeboy



Series: Ancient Egyptian Poetry and Other Marvels of Antiquity [3]
Category: Night at the Museum (2006 2009)
Genre: Angst and Smut, M/M, We'll get to that later, Well not really a massive amount of smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 21:04:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3704767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pan_ismyhomeboy/pseuds/pan_ismyhomeboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They both have hangups and new relationships are never easy. Or, Larry overthinks everything and Ahkmenrah isn't about to let him go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sundering Myself

**Author's Note:**

> Like My Heart, Not Softened, the title of this fic is taken from an Ancient Egyptian love poem. It reads:
> 
> _The wild goose flies up and soars,  
>  She sinks down upon the net._
> 
> _The birds cry in flocks,  
>  But I hasten homeward,  
> Since I care for your love alone._
> 
> _My heart yearns for your breast,  
>  I cannot sunder myself from your attractions._

Larry isn’t as young as he once was, but you’d never know it from the way he and Ahkmenrah go at each other like cats in heat. Not that Larry’s age is entirely negligible — he’ll never match the other man in stamina, lumbar flexibility, or sheer number of orgasms in a single night — but he feels oddly energized from every stolen kiss. And moan. And fuck. Part of it might be the tablet. He wouldn’t put it past strange magical doohickeys affecting his sex drive or convincing his body that it’s really a decade and some change younger. (And there’s this weird thing about his graying hair, in that he’s almost certain he’s got _less_ of it; he keeps meaning to bring it up with Ahkmenrah but keeps being, ahem, _distracted_.)

Magic tablets that cheat death aside though, Larry’s pretty sure most of his vitality comes from the pharaoh himself. Being at the center of Ahkmenrah’s attention is both overwhelming and intoxicating. A good bit of him whispers caution. They’re moving too fast, falling too hard, and for all he feels it Larry _isn’t_ a lovestruck, hormonal, and naive teenager anymore. He’s not even a slightly less hormonal, though still lovestruck and naive, newlywed with Erica in his arms and Nick on the way. There’s nowhere for this thing with Ahkmenrah to fucking _go_ , but still he finds his way to the tomb or the employee breakroom (or, one memorable time behind the front desk). Sometimes it feels like a lie, like they’re both making a terrible mistake and they both know it but neither’s willing to call the other’s bluff quite yet. One day Larry will leave this place — if only because he ages and the exhibits _don’t_ — and he knows Ahkmenrah already loves him with every ounce of his heart.

He knows because Ahkmenrah told him and because when Larry didn’t say it back, there was only the same patient acceptance in the other man’s eyes he’s seen since the first night. Larry would feel better about all this had Ahkmenrah been hurt, maybe demanded an entirely justifiable reckoning. And yet there hasn’t been one. Ahkmenrah says the words and kisses Larry whether he says them back or not, and Larry’s chest wants to break open with how stupendously awful an idea this is.

He’s just going to fuck it up, he wants to tell Ahkmenrah. He wants to take the pharaoh by the shoulders and shake him, ask him where the hell he gets off falling in love with a screwup like him. He wants to tell him about letting down Erica and Nicky, his family and his ex’s, and himself most of all. That’s what he calls a trend if there ever was one and all the inspirational speeches from former presidents aside, he’s not positive you can teach an old dog new tricks.

It’s not so much he forgets all this before sleeping with Ahkmenrah as that he does so in spite of his (numerous, overpowering, quite insistent) reservations. Maybe he’s tired of being a screwup; maybe he gets way too much selfish pleasure at inexplicably being adored by a literal king with the body, and quite rightly so, of a god. Maybe it’s because of the warm glow deep in his belly whenever Ahkmenrah looks at him with that soft smile that says _you are precious, you are treasured, and you are mine_.

He doesn’t know yet if he loves Ahkmenrah back or not. He’s been in and out of love for a good chunk of his life until Erica came and went, and he’d been convinced he was out of the game for good. There’s the stomach flutters and the flush of warmth high on his cheeks, the way he stills and melts when the other man so much as strokes the back of his neck. (It’s always been a sensitive spot for him and he’s never had a partner take advantage of that quite like Ahkmenrah.) But Larry likes to think as old as he is that he’s learned a thing or two, like the fact oxytocin is a hell of a drug and getting swept up in sex after a dry spell — though of course he’s got nothing on three thousand years of undeath — makes you use all sorts of half-truths to justify turning to someone else to satisfy an aching need. _He_ knows all this but he’s not sure Ahkmenrah does. The kid was what, nineteen, twenty when he died? Pharaoh or not, that’s not enough time to spectacularly fuck up your life (and the lives of those around you) and learn from those mistakes.

But of course Ahkmenrah doesn’t want to hear about any of this. He calls Larry impossible things like _beloved_ and _mine_ , presses their foreheads together when he climaxes, kisses every inch of Larry’s body until the night guard is literally begging for those lips stretched around his cock. And afterwards, when they’re both utterly spent and tangled together, he strokes Larry’s face and whispers stories to him, tales about the life and home he left so very far behind. Some of these stories are even in English; those that aren’t are because Ahkmenrah needs to tell them more than he needs to be understood. Larry’s starting to pick up on a few words here and there, names mostly, a few places, the most basic of verbs, but the pharaoh talks fast in his mother tongue and Larry has to be content with appreciating only the rise and fall of his cadence.

Sometimes Ahkmenrah talks about his life back in Egypt wistfully, parents and siblings and past lovers and secret trysts, and his hand wanders to stroke Larry for the sheer pleasure of something weighty in his palm. Sometimes he softly recounts what it was like for him in the desert for centuries upon centuries, or what it was like in that box for decades upon decades, and he has to be held until he stops crying. Then, slowly, Larry fucks him open with his fingers until the other man utterly comes apart. (Sometimes, Larry knows, it’s only after falling apart completely that life starts to make sense again.)

“What do you need?” Larry asks him softly as he wipes the cooling sweat from Ahkmenrah’s brow.

“I don’t know,” the pharaoh says, exhausted, eyes red. His hands are shaking as they reach up to card through Larry’s hair. “Everything. You.”

Ahkmenrah is so certain and Larry is so very not, but he has no response as they catch their breath in the darkened room.

…

Ahkmenrah doesn’t have a heart. Not a working one, at least. He’s still got one in his chest cavity, right where it was the day he died, though it’s doing little more now than gathering dust. Other organs have long since been parted from his body and are now tucked away in canopic jars under the watchful eye of a veritable pantheon of goddesses. Not his heart, though, not when he’d need his wits about him in the afterlife. A pharaoh without a heart wouldn’t be getting very far or doing many impressive deeds at all.

The organ doesn’t work but he swears he can still feel a pulse throbbing at the side of his neck, just as he gets short-winded despite having no lungs left in him at all. He still doesn’t fully understand the power of the tablet and may never as long as he continues to exist. There is no blood in him and yet his skin flushes with pleasure at being touched and his erection has yet to fail either him or his lover. There is no heartbeat and yet Larry says he can hear one when his head is on Ahkmenrah’s bare chest.

Whatever the nature of this phantom heart — and the phantom rest of him, magically brought back to life as he is — Ahkmenrah knows he has been given a second chance most people in the world never get. There are a few other exhibits who understand, he thinks, though he doesn’t know how to speak Tyrannosaurus rex or African lion or capuchin to confirm his suspicions. Being alive again, whatever the reason and whatever the limitations, is something he doesn’t intend to squander. This is why he throws all caution and sensibility to the wind when it comes to a certain night guard. It has nothing to do with naivety or age; that’s a ridiculous thing to consider when Ahkmenrah is easily three thousand years Larry’s senior. He may have the body of a young man but he is _anything_ but. One day perhaps he’ll be able to convince Larry of this, who is so intent on treating him like someone who needs protection and guidance.

He is Nesu-Bity Ahkmenrah, first of his name and _per-aa_ of the Two Lands of his fathers. He has neither needed nor had protection in a long, long time.

But Larry Daley doesn’t want to hear that. Larry Daley is a father and understands the world in a way Ahkmenrah simply cannot. The world is fragile; _Nick_ is fragile; there is so very much more left to lose. It’s there in the way Larry compulsively checks his phone when it’s not custody nights, just in case he missed a message from his son, and in the way the night guard so easily slips into a nurturing (and, with Dexter and the Huns, disciplinarian) role with the exhibits. He doesn’t even think twice. These people need his help and with a family as fragmented as his had become, Larry is willing to step up to the challenge.

Which is perhaps why Ahkmenrah cannot understand the other man’s reluctance, first in returning physical affection and now in repeating the words confessed so very many times. For so many centuries there simply had been nothing left for the pharaoh to lose. His culture was conquered multiple times over, his religion faded into eccentric footnotes of history, his parents stoically pretending that all was as it should be despite the fact none of them could pass into the afterlife, and then when the expedition team found his sarcophagus —

No. Ahkmenrah did not expect to ever _want_ to live again. Let Larry push aside his words and pretend he does not understand. Let him protest this liaison — if such a term even still applies after several months — as ill-advised. Ahkmenrah thinks the construction of his tablet was _ill-advised_ ; he’s not about to cede to Larry’s neuroses simply because another course of action might be _safer_.

Though his heart is long since dead and still, Ahkmenrah has no intention of taking it back.

**Author's Note:**

> Research!
> 
> [Canopic jars](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canopic_jar) were used during mummification to hold various organs of an embalmed pharaoh - the lungs, stomach, liver, and intestines, each of which was watched over by a different goddess. The heart was left as it was considered the seat of emotions and the intellect.
> 
> [Nesu-Bity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_royal_titulary#Throne_name_.28praenomen.29) is one way to write in English the title "He of the Sedge and the Bee." The sedge and bee were symbols for Upper Egypt (the Nile River valley) and Lower Egypt (the Nile Delta). The title Nesu-Bity refers to the unification of the Two Lands and the fact a pharaoh rules over them both.
> 
>  _P(e)r-aa_ means "Great House" or "Great Mansion" and is where the Greeks ultimately derived the word "Pharaoh."


End file.
